Hushed Willows all that we mourn is already here

Happening at the same time as the Yule party! @Mali

She’d been told about the gathering coming up, just like the meetings, and her attendance is optional. When the moon is brightest, she knows it is to start, but she does not find her way making the trip. It’s dark and she doesn’t know anywhere near half the members she should and the middle of the night, no matter how bright the moon, is not when she wants to meet them. Coming to the meetings in broad daylight is difficult enough.
 
Qilaq moves away from the waterfall until it is a low rumble in the background and finds a clearing between three willows that open up to the night sky. She’s always enjoyed looking at the sky, she remembers, but there isn’t much she knows about it. Perhaps someone has come along at some point and told her a thing or two but being dumped out of a whirlwind has frazzled most of her memories and what she knows, or thinks she knows.
 
It does not stop her from trying, making herself comfortable on the cold around as the tops of the willows frame the night sky.

Whatever was going on, it seemed very improper to him.  They obviously didn't care that his sister was still missing and they apparently weren't going to do anything about it.  He wandered kind of close to whatever was going on, trying to hear just a little before he moved on, feeling even more steadfast in his convictions.  They were awful and apparently nobody else could see -- they were too blinded by whatever sugary sweet facade the foul witches put on.  It was so fake! How could nobody else figure it out?

Whatever.  He was basically a prisoner here until he figured out some place he could take Brilliance to where they could hide.  Ok, sure, anywhere would just about be better but it wasn't like he'd been able to go explore.  Those idiots still chased after him like he was a baby. But how could he be a child after everything that happened?  Just because they broke their own kids and made them helpless, pathetic things without a lick of common sense didn't mean that they had any right to treat him the way they did.  They'd never respect him because he wasn't their blood.  Because he refused to kneel to them and everything they'd ever done had made things worse.  Instead he turned back toward somewhere less populated to go mope about some more. 

Except he was pretty sure that there wasn't supposed to be a rock or a tree stump or something there.  In the low light and his distracted state it took him a moment to process that was another wolf.  Not anyone he knew, but... what was she looking at?   He took a few steps out from under the trees and craned his neck to try to see what must have been so interesting.  He wasn't seeing it, it was just the sky.

One ear twitches when Mali gets closer but lost in the sky, she attributes it to the party off in the distance or something insignificant she doesn’t have to pay attention to. It isn’t until he’s in her space that she notices the looming presence and she slowly turns, as if gently tapped on the shoulder, before she jerks her entire body in surprise a beat later.
 
She scrambles a little, stumbling to her feet. He’s young, like Oke-Anos, but she’s never seen him before. Why isn’t he at the party with everyone else? She’d counted on not being disturbed this night but clearly he has other plans.
 
“He-hey,” she says quietly, taking a step back for her own space.

As he squinted upwards, trying to figure out what was so enthralling, he missed her slow turn, but her sudden jump sent him scattering back a few steps too, not really expecting the sudden movement.  He didn't really understand why she jumped, it wasn't like he was tryingto be too sneaky or something. He was just curious.

Mali  of course, isn't exactly well socialized.  Between questionable parenting and the fact that 90% of his interactions with non-family were people going out of their way to annoy him for whatever bizarre reason, his reply was kind of blunt, What're you looking at? Not really hostile or anything, just lacking social grace.

He looks up at the sky where she’d taken to watching but seemed confused, as if she hadn’t known what she was doing. Her brows burrow together as she watches him, glancing up and back down, and blinks when he asks the question. She is not often question about the sky and her fondness for it, that she once pictured herself running from star to star one day (a memory sudden washing ashore) and she smiles sheepishly and shrugs.
 
“Just the sky. I-I like the stars,” she informs and curls her tail to her side. “I d-don’t know you,” she informs a beat later. Maybe he knows Okeanos. “I’m Qilaq.”

She he still seemed a little weird.  He didn't know why, and he certainly wasn't civilized enough to change much from his just barreling-through-life way of doing things.  At Qilaq stating that she didn't know him, he tilted his head.  So?  He'd been here longer than she had, as far as he knew, so he didn't know why that would even be an issue.  Didn't he have more of a reason to be wary of whatever freaks the leaders let in than she did of some pup who'd been here forever (unfortunately).  Speaking of, what the hell was with that stupid party?  Like why was that a thing and could he convince someone to take his family away from here if he bothered to head that way? I'm Mali.

Again he looked up a moment, still just standing there like a fool.  Aren't they just kinda like there though?  Like a tree or something.  He didn't see how the sky could be at all interesting (you couldn't chase it, eat it, or sleep on it, and that's about all his life was limited to), but then again he also hadn't really paid much attention to it.  He waffled between thinking it was probably exactly the same every night or entirely different each time like grains of sand on a shoreline.  Either way, not super interesting.  Did some wolves study trees?  They were probably crazy.

“Um, y-yeah, I guess,” she says, glancing up. Sometimes the sky is different but this one has been the same since she arrived. Sometimes cloudy, sometimes clear. She remembers something different where she used to live, before all the bad stuff happened, but she couldn’t map it. She probably couldn’t even recognize it. “S-sometimes there’s shooting stars, if y-you’re lucky,” she adds. She can’t remember how she knows that, a mental block separating a lot of her memories, but slowly they are returning. Maybe she’ll know, eventually, but for now she plays around with the pieces she has.

This was a kid who had pretty much just gotten a surface level look at the world.  It still sounded like nonsense, and he didn't seem particularly convinced by any of it, They move?  That seems weird.  I haven't seen that.  It sounded like nonsense, rather like a rock moving on its own, or a tree just getting up and going for a walk.  At some point, his imagination had pretty much been ditched in a pit somewhere, at least the parts not dealing with what newfangled conspiracy was raising its ugly head that day.  How would they even move.  They're just stuck there.  Rather like him just standing there like a noob.

Qilaq’s brows knit together, increasingly struggling to handle the abrasiveness of his words. It reminds her how some of the wolves talked to her where she’d been held captive but the youthfulness in his face keeps her from completely losing it. Seabreeze and Lily has promised her safety and she’s certain they wouldn’t let a child in that was capable of hurting. And surely, he wouldn’t? He’s bigger than her and, by default, much stronger. Her frame has started to fill out but the hollowness still lingers in her finer features.
 
“Um, th-they fall sometimes, I-I guess,” she offers, struggling to put her thought to words and grasping for the nearest thing to convey her point.

All things considered, Mali was on pretty good behavior, even if he seemed to have forgotten how to not sound like a flaming jerkwad.  This was his awful attempt at trying to hold a conversation.  But in all honesty, he was just really not getting it.  He thought he got it now, but he was wrong yet again, So then you watch them to make sure you don't get hit by them.  It wasn't as much a question, pretty sure that was the real reason.  Mali could understand being wary of dangerous stuff, he just wondered how he hadn't seen one crash to the ground before.  Maybe they hid in the snow this time of year -- or the trees he frequently slept under acted as a shield.

Qilaq isn’t sure she wants to tell him that’s not it but on some level, she supposes it’s not a bad idea? She’s never seen a shooting star during the day so she feels relatively safe from falling rocks out of the sky. It’s a stretch but it’s there? Sorta? Did you squint hard enough?
 
She shrugs it off with an unsure nod and shuffles her front feet, looking down at the ground at nothing in particular. She’d drown too much attention simply looking at the sky and now she doesn’t know what to do so she sits, patient as always, until he steers or leaves her behind.

Okay, whatever.  He wasn't too sold on why anyone would pay that much attention to the sky.  It just didn't seem too interesting, but he might take a look now and again to make sure he wasn't gonna hit by some star about to fall on him.  He shrugged.  Guess it was time for him to just go back to whatever he was doing.  He'd pretty much run out of questions and couldn't carry a conversation to save his life.  And so he turned and wandered on without any fanfare, totally oblivious of the discomfort he'd caused.